Thinking she couldn't survive without main squeeze, mobster's girlfriend slits her own throat

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- She knew she wouldn’t be able to survive without her prison-bound mobster for 11 months. So Regina Pate slit her own throat.

The suicide bid was thwarted when her boyfriend, Joseph Sclafani of Prince’s Bay, wrapped a towel around the wound and drove her to a hospital.

In a letter to U.S. District Judge Allyne R. Ross, Ms. Pate pleaded for leniency for Sclafani, writing, “I was overwhelmed with fear for my life without him. I could not get these worrying thoughts out of my head.”

Sclafani, 44, of Wheeling Avenue, is due to appear before Judge Ross at Brooklyn federal court on Thursday for sentencing on a parole violation.

The reputed Gambino soldier is expected to receive 11 months behind bars on the violation, which stems from Sclafani’s original sentence to 97 months in December 2000 following a guilty plea to racketeering for his role in a cocaine and marijuana trafficking ring.

According to the letter to the judge, Ms. Pace couldn’t stand the thought of spending the next 11 months without Sclafani by her side.

On Oct. 22, she took a razor and slashed herself across the throat.

Acting quickly, Sclafani grabbed a shirt, wrapped it around her neck to thwart the bleeding, and drove Ms. Pate to the hospital.

“He saved her life,” Sclafani’s attorney, Eric Franz, said by phone yesterday. “She nearly died. If it weren’t for my client, she wouldn’t have survived.”

Franz would not say where the incident occurred or give additional details of the suicide attempt, citing patients’ medical privacy laws.